Kaspellidon was in custody and in the news all in the same day. No help was needed by the swift and efficient Pincho Police for that. Apparently the drug lord had been too hated for any delay. At first Crimson despaired they wouldn’t get a piece of the action. But she had Clidjitt and Shaak-Rom comb through the police news and message boards out of sheer disappointment. A name pinged up.

“Eeg Grula,” Shaak-Rom announced, “Known associate of Kaspellidon’s organization. Considered armed and dangerous. Gave police the slip in a nasty firefight. Only one to escape the string of thirteen arrests!”

Clidjitt gave a Brev equivalent of a whistle—a long bubbling hiss. Crimson’s day was getting better.

“Where?”

“Last seen at the gunfight, Horopolus City. Police staked out any and all known locations for Grula’s activities, but he hasn’t shown. They’ve been too busy bagging the rest of Kaspellidon’s gang to dig further.”

“Okay. We go in our way. Make teams of three. We start shaking the bushes around Grula’s haunts. We’ll bag this rat.”

*

It took a week. By that time Captain Ratu Tallar had even come back by to recognize their service to the Police. Crimson had had to leave her stake-out with Tager and Jumondo to fly back up to the Rival Bay to receive him. He’d given her a star of cooperation as well—begrudgingly admitting they had pulled off a pretty good stunt. She chucked the medal on the dashboard in the cockpit. Then they had to empty the shuttle bay again, and get everyone back down to Kaldus Major to resume their work.

Finally Cort called her.

“I think we got our man,” said the space rodent, “Kaldus Minor. Grula’s got a safe house there. Mog Mog and Olper cornered one of his street dealers, and I got him to spill the beans.”

“You’re the fuzziest Good Cop I know. All right, get everyone back to Horopolus, and send the coordinates for Kaldus Minor to Andross on the Rival. The Boatman leaves in eight hours. Good work.”

“I’m not fuzzy, I’m persuasive—”

She closed the voice chip. They had a drug dealer to catch.

*

Kaldus Minor was not like its big brother. The arid desert world had more sandstorms than clouds visible from space, and what looked like barren rock was actually dense forests of prickly, short trees call gradlbocks. At full height the spiny, bent monsters were probably chest height to an average humanoid. Keffler would be thrilled.

What the trees lived on was anybody’s guess, but that they came right up the border of every city on Kaldus Minor, and had to be kept out with tall fences, was undeniable. It wouldn’t have been a far reach for Crimson to imagine the spiny dense mat of trees as a slow but sentient riot, thronging about the base of the artificially constructed colonies of humanoids waiting to carry away the dust encrusted metal buildings piece by piece. Her Mindframe clicked. Hardly the benign hedge of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale.

She descended the ramp of the Boatman, left foot clanking, and squinted behind her dark goggles. The sun, Pincha, was high, and it looked like just another baking hot day in a line of a hundred others.

Olper strode out next to her. He alone of the crew refused Shaak-Rom’s goggles at distribution. Now the hard blue skin of the Vizavian caught the sun’s intense light and looked even dryer. He smiled approvingly. With one hand he unhooked a corner of his head scarf and wrapped it around his jewelry-bedangled face, leaving only his eyebrow piercings readily visible. “Like home,” the tribesman nodded.

Crimson risked only a brief glance into the blinding sky. “Snake spit.” Her bare shoulder and the tops of her ears already felt like fried egg whites. “Rom! Gimme’ the poncho or something.”

Shaak-Rom, with his chunky rock-armor and dark goggles, looked like an overdressed kid on a ski slope. He turned his striped horns back into the Boatman and returned with the old poncho she’d refused moments earlier.

The whole party descended the New Lupell space port. They’d pretty much brought everybody. “Have fun kids,” was all Keffler had said as they all loaded into the Boatman. He and P’Xak were the only ones left onboard the Rival. Andross had ensured that. “I’ve missed all the fun this time! And that stupid anti-drug has worn off!” he whined. It was fine. They’d need every gun, if the police reports were accurate about Grula’s escape. Even Braevel came down to stay with the Boatman, in case they needed an emergency medical patch up.

“Rom, get a transport.”

“Right.” The Trivven trotted off down the hot platform to find a rental.

“Micron, you have the coordinates?”

The rib-high synthoid cocked his head, distracted. In a moment, he exchanged his grayish skin for a dusty yellow, matching the predominant terrain. Then he rotated his synthetic skull around towards her, his hominal eyes catching hers before she could avoid them. “They are uploaded, and mapped. It is 16 kliks to target.”

“Fine. Get out there and scope it out. We’ll be along shortly. Don’t let them see you.”

The android’s wrists and ankles split and wheels exuded from them. Then his back arched and folded backwards; his arms refolded along his sides and extended to the dust. Now crouched in a strange, all-fours, ATV sort of way, the small synthoid spun his wheels and skidded off into the desert, kicking lose gravel on Andros and Mog Mog with his speed. Andross cursed, but Micron was gone, like a Chihuahua in a dune buggy.

The crew milled about in the shadow of the spaceport authority, a dusty, fat tower with a steel parasol for a cupola. New Lupell was quiet compared to the bustle and commerce of anywhere on Kaldus Major. The minor planet was clearly a publicity colony: if you were wealthy enough to own property there, you were also eccentric enough to. Impractical blue-glass, flying, covered walkways were the most refreshing visible color in the harsh ecosystem. There was little outdoor activity, except for a few busy porters and space port engineers, heavily shaded and eager to return to the environment-controlled indoors. Crimson and the raggedy crew of the Rival were the only pedestrians waiting in the oppressive heat. Hooded, goggled, and shrouded, Crimson felt like a sweaty Christmas gnome, but even in the Space Port Authority building’s shade, she wouldn’t expose her pallid skin to the hard steel refracted boiling light.

Nearly thirty minutes passed before Shaak-Rom finally returned. He dangled a key peg from his red fingers triumphantly. “We have a transport. Full grav, with limited hover capability, but it guzzles fuel. And we have to fill it up before returning it.”

“Lead the way,” Crimson grumbled.

Shaak-Rom turned them down a dark ramp to an underground transport bay. Crimson took one last glance across the dull, prickly landscape. We’re coming for you, sleeping beauty.

Two days passed, and a Linkburst came from Qualvana. It was prerecorded. Rullorrg seemed forward on the edge of his seat. “Good work Rival Bay. My operatives in the Pincho system received the relays of the surveillance feeds. Thanks to you we have enough evidence to stuff Vaken Rae in a cell for a long time. More than that, we’re cooperating with the Pincho police, and we’ve shared what we have on Rae’s contact on Kaldus. He’ll be singing for a judge by the end of a week.

“I understand you had to pull some crazy stunts to make it happen. The Illegal Substance Bureau is duly impressed. We confiscated the payment made to Rae via your bank chip, and froze his assets, but as agreed 30,000,000 is yours, along with a Badge of Cooperation from the Qualvana Police. It’ll give you some perks in this corner of the galaxy, and you won’t be approached by scum like Rae again. You’ll smell too official.” The Chief Police Inspector’s eyes smiled, although his mouth was obscured by his tentacles. “Oh, and by the way, I talked to the Chiefs and got approval. Next time you’re back this way my techs can install a ‘galactic decoder’—I believe you called it—on your vessel. But I have to stress the secrecy of this device. They’re very cool. And the criminal underworld would be very interested to know we’re listening in to most of their chatter now.

“It’s been a pleasure, captain.” Rullorrg tapped his panel with a satisfied whack and the image went dark.

Crimson had called Gator to the bridge when she’d received the message. He punched the back of her chair when it finished. “Ha haaaa!” he crowed, “You hear that, Crims? He’s given us a decoder! Now that’s what I call a job well done!”

Crimson grimaced; it was almost a smile. She turned around to face the toothy monster behind her. He’d rocked back on his thick tail and crossed his arms over his torso; he looked like he’d won a school spelling bee. He pointed a claw at her: “Hey! I know we don’t usually double back on ourselves, but that’s worth it! We’re going back, right?”

She glared left and right, considering.

“You know it would make finding our marks easier…” Gator tempted. “’Sides there’s plenty of bad guys everywhere. We don’t hafta’ jump system as soon as we bag one. It’d be nice to get back to hunting bounties after this.”

“Not in Qualvana!” Crimson whined like a creaky oak door. “The legalities rot. I’d rather stick around here and help bag Kaspellidon. Maybe the cops will need our help.”

“Deliver nuthin’,” was Crimson’s reply when Kaspellidon’s minions tried to arrange a neutral drop site for the drugs. “We’ve risked enough flying through Pincho space as it is. Had to eject our cargo and 5 good crew mid mag-flight just to get them off board to avoid police detection. You come to us.”

They’d threatened, ummed,awed, and finally capitulated to her demands. Kaspellidon had even come on screen himself: his red face and four sleek crests of coral displayed displeasure and keen evaluation. Crimson returned the glare. “You don’t trust us? We don’t trust you. Bring your money and whatever else you think you need, but the trade happens here.”

Negotiations concluded, Crimson informed Cort. She could hear him roll his eyes through the intercom. “I’ll go syphon the air out of the shuttle bay. Again.”

*

Several space stations floated high above Kaldus Major and Minor. The twin planets provided a generous gravitational “safe spot,” where the busy trade ports could conduct a steady, accessible trade between the co-orbital planets. Kaspellidon chose the busiest one to mask their transaction. That was fine with Crimson. She and Clidjitt were in the cockpit when Kaspellidon’s ship arrived. The Brev’s compound eyes spotted a conspicuous tail of four other enforcer ships hovering at casual and subtle places nearby, amid the other space traffic. They could hover all they wanted. Out here any aggression would be instantly pounced on by the prevalent police forces in their difficult-to-spot cruisers. Crimson wanted it to go smoothly.

Shaak-Rom reissued everyone their masers, and rehashed their defense plan in a brief meeting at the Circle. Everything planned for Vaken Rae’s visit, plus the extra crew armed and protecting the bridge and engine room.

“Andross, you in?” Crimson asked. The crew’s heads swung to the recovering pilot.

Crimson cut in before an argument ensued. “Good. Everybody’s happy. To your posts.”

*

For the hundredth time this mission they waited in the hallway for the alarm klaxons to sound. When they did, and the bay lights blinked green, everyone trooped into the shuttle bay. Tager and Olper ran straight for the Boatman to take up positions by the crystals. Keffler was added to their present welcome party, a maser resting across his knees.

Kaspellidon travelled in style. It looked like a rental, but a fancy rental. A K-Major luxury yacht with room to entertain your dirty business associates, and enough cargo space to keep you over for a trip to another system. The personnel hatch released with a stylish whiff. The characters that descended the unfolding stairs were becoming all too familiar: well-dressed, heat-packing muscle, followed by the slightly plump sleek-suited, crafty-eyed boss man. Kaspellidon’s goons spread out, not standing on ceremony to appear friendly.

The drug lord walked up between his enforcers. He had golden ropes across the front of his suit as though he were an admiral in some private navy. He was imposingly tall and his sagittal head-coral fins added an air of intimidation. Crimson wondered if he had them surgically altered for effect.

Kaspellidon sniffed, and took stock of her motley crew. Despite Krevvenar, Jumondo, and Gator, Crimson realized that a cyborg, a cripple, and someone on crutches might not seem the most impressive of crews. The drug lord addressed them in a bass voice that dripped with self-importance. “When Vaken Rae informed me he had chartered a shipment with a deputy of the Galactic Precinct I admit I was dubious. I’m not sure my feeling has changed.”

“A hundred million convinced us to make a detour,” Crimson replied. “We usually work for the police, but we work for profit.”

“So it seems,” Kaspellidon murmured, “And you’ve had a time of it! And yet I want to see the crewman purported to have taken the Crystals himself. Your ship could lose its commission for a stunt like that. It gives me great assurance.” His voice was like dusk, comforting yet ominous.

“He’s right here,” said Crimson stepping to the side, fully exposing Andross.

Kaspellidon’s eyebrows lifted, and he puffed, “Indeed? How is he even upright?”

Andross still leaned on one crutch fully, and propped his maser in a casually threatening direction with the other. In his own ornery way, he did look slightly fearsome. “Doc pumped me full of something nasty enough to crash the entire Flight. That and two days on a shuttle with no food, and I’d say it’s been the worst week of my life. Thanks for nuthin’!”

Kaspellidon regarded Andross with a long face and downturned lips.

“You got money for us, or not?” Crimson demanded. She’d risked a lot to get them all here, but she wagered Kaspellidon needed it.

“And do you have cargo?”

Crimson pointed her robotic hand towards the Boatman and jacked her thumb back to them. Cort hopped up the ramp and disappeared. In a moment his electric cart buzzed out on the shuttle bay deck, and whirred to a halt in front of the drug lord. The Islavian scurried around and opened the closest container exposing the bags of sparkling crystals. Kaspellidon leaned over and evaluated the goods. Then he lifted two fingers over his shoulder and a goon with a small disk attached to his wrist came forward. “You’re payment is here. Bring out the full shipment for counting here in the shuttle bay, and we will conclude the transaction then.”

“Of course,” Crimson said flatly.

It was a bit of time for Clidjitt, Cort, Jumondo, and Krevvenar to pile the containers on the deck. Then Kaspellidon’s goons set about examining and counting the packages. When they had finished, one gave the nod to Kaspellidon and he nodded, satisfied. “I don’t usually come in person, but under the circumstances I felt it necessary. I desire to make my own impressions of the people I deal with. You have upheld your part of the bargain. Perhaps we will do business again sometime.” He flicked his fingers again, and the goon with the wrist disk stepped forward. Kaspellidon waved his own hand over the container and it opened; a payment chip lay inside. “For your efforts.”

Crimson nodded to Shaak-Rom. The Trivven came decked in his full outfit: the strange rock shells on his torso and arms and legs. He produced their bank chip. The two lackeys linked devices. Three harmonic beeps and the transaction was complete.

Crimson leaned slightly to Keffler and muttered, “I hope you haven’t kept any of this shipment for yourself…”

He gave a quiet snort.

Kaspellidon’s goons lowered the yacht’s cargo ramp and loaded the containers. As the ramp closed and sealed Crimson ordered everyone out. They sealed the bay, and began siphoning the air.

“Is that it?” Shaak-Rom asked, as the lights in the bay turned warning-red.

“It’s up to Rullorrg now.” Crimson answered.

“Are Tager and Olper still in the Boatman?” Cort asked.

Everyone looked around. They weren’t present.

“Oh man,” the space rodent shook his head. “Gonna’ have to do this all again…!”

Gator had thought about eating Andross… multiple times. Unfortunately seriously. He’d had to lock himself in the back of the Boatman’s cargo bay and bury himself in a pile of machine parts, trying to build some new device, which would do something, that would be applicable somehow. He’d only had to snap his jaws at Andross once (who came in bored, irritable, and looking for someone to entertain him) to get rid of him. Gator’s growl followed the retreating meat bag out the door, generated by both his throat and his ravenous belly. Megladytes didn’t have to eat every day. Often they gorged themselves on an animal carcass, and that could last them most of the week—it was true! But in this case, Gator was due for a full meal. In the end, his little machine only managed to open its arms like an automated spice rack with a pincer complex, and the churning triangular tank tread that was supposed to climb stairs, but instead only rolled in on itself like Gator’s stomach.

While Clidjitt and the others were focused on their stunt arrival (sliding in behind Kaldus Minor, disarming the jammer while masked by the meteor Phaenon—an abandoned satellite of the Kalduses’—and sauntering out like a merchant to rendezvous with the Rival Bay) Gator paced like a wild cat. Finally, in desperation, he soldered chunky, three-meter aluminum silts to his contraption!

After 30 minutes sitting the Rival’s shuttle bay, the alarms finally sounded the all-clear, and Gator even tolerated Clidjitt, Andross, and P’Xak hovering nervously on the back of the cargo ramp for the last five minutes.

At last the ramp hissed and dropped. Gator stood at the top, fingers twitching as the heads, torsos, and legs of Crimson and several others appeared. He stomped down towards them.

“Good work,” Crimson grunted.

“Feed. Me.” Gator growled.

“Right here, Big Guy,” Keffler motioned. Next to his mobility chair was one of the kitchen’s rolling trays. A delicious rack of cattle ribs sat there, raw and dripping. Gator took the tray with both hands and steered it away from the others, before lifting the tender meat, bones, and everything in both hands. Waves of savory euphoria burst in his mouth as his teeth snapped on the ribs and tendons, popping them juicily.

*

Andross’ grimace followed Gator as he went and crouched over his kill. Turning back to the others the human hunched his shoulders slightly and imitated, “Feed. Me!”

Keffler snorted. “Ha! Made ya’ soup and sandwiches in the Mess.”

“Report,” Crimson asked.

Clidjitt and Andross replied at the same time.

Clidjitt said: “Mission success! We entered Kaldus fly-space without detection and disarmed the jammer in a sensor blind spot. It seems nobody was counting traffic dots.”

Crimson didn’t regard the human, but nodded to the insectoid, “Well done. Get yourselves up to the Mess and have something to eat. I’ve arranged a meet up with Rae’s buyer: a low life called Kaspellidon. We meet him in ten hours.” The pilots nodded and slipped passed her. Crimson continued, “Cort, check on the cargo; make sure it’s all right. We’ll leave it in the Boatman.”

“You got it,” replied the space rodent. He hopped up the ramp and scuttled to the mouth of the cargo bay, where he stopped suddenly, beholding the 3 meter aluminum spider. “What the heck is that?”

Usually waiting cast Crimson into a wasteland of dark thoughts and piqued uselessness—the vacuum of inactivity somehow exposed her empty, robotic soul. This time, it didn’t come. Maybe Keffler had ticked her off just right.

Maybe the universe didn’t owe her a soul back. But if a squishy, soft arm and a leg were all she had left, then she wasn’t going to let anyone take those from her without a fight. She called Micron to help her.

The miniature android was illegal in 17 systems simply by existing. Not all androids, or as Micron preferred, Synthoids, reached what most people would consider sentience. Some were clearly under-programmed. But some were more conscious than certain humanoids Crimson knew. Conscious synthetic lifeforms didn’t fit many categories, and several star systems simply refused to integrate them. The ones that looked normal but could perform above normal expectations also made people wary, for obvious enough reasons. Of course, “normal” in a universe of thousands of alien races could mean anything. Fortunately Micron didn’t resemble most humanoids.

Micron was a retired police bot from Andromeda III. Andromedans, genetically, were short; and their heavy brows and face made them vaguely simian (though the lower jaw was thinner than a reptile’s). Crimson didn’t know exactly how old he was, or how long he’d freelanced on various worlds and odd jobs before his programming became fully self-aware. Mostly he was a designed for recon and pursuit. That’s why she’d taken him on. Upon integrating him with the Rival’s sub systems they learned that he came with a curio cabinet of little skills like hacking electronic locks and such. “It is standard Peace Keeper technology,” he’d explained: “for entering a suspect’s domain when necessary.”

The diminutive droid only stood to her ribcage at full height, and had a vaguely werewolf build (if her Mindframe could be believed); his knees were reversed like a dog on its hind legs. He didn’t have hair, or wear clothes usually, though a smooth, matte, skin covered most of his structure, which looked eerily muscular underneath. He was often a chalky gray color, or else he could darken it for more clandestine operations; Crimson had also seen him turn navy blue, and a dirty red. Heavy ankles and wrists however betrayed his non-organic make up. Clean black seams opened to reveal sets of extendable wheels. The ‘pursuit’ function of the android being made evident when he folded in half and became a miniature quad-mounted torso and head that could relay anything through the eye cameras to a slaved computer while on a rapid chase.

He didn’t wear clothes; he didn’t have genitalia. Clothes inhibited his transformation into pursuit mode. Still, out of the corner of the eye, it felt like having a little hairless, naked midget onboard. It had caught her off guard once or twice.

It was his eyes, though, that were disturbingly human. If they had been a beautiful blue, one could almost write them off as idealized glass, like a doll. But Micron’s eyes were a dark brown, and unreadably deep. Crimson made it a point to stare at the fat rubber antennas that stood behind his ears instead. No need to send her into an existential maelstrom of why a synthoid had more depth than her.

But Crimson was interested in none of these functions at the moment. She was hoping he was handy with electronics. With two days until Gator would arrive, hungry and cross, she needed someone else to help her load a concealed firearm into the spacious gap in her left thigh compartment.

The universe didn’t owe her anything, and she was about to make a phony drug deal on unfamiliar territory with a dangerous criminal. A clunky maser wouldn’t be hanging from her hip in plain sight for this one, and she wasn’t going in unarmed. She’d have to apply for the Galactic Precinct’s concealed weapon sub-license after all this was over…

Crimson watched the Pincho police carry off the small spoor crate, filing out of Keffler’s personal green house. She waited impassive, but from Keffler’s pinched right eye and protruding lips she guessed the gardener was more than a little steamed up by the inter-system customs crackdown.

She didn’t care. When she gauged the police were out of earshot, she leaned into the gardener’s ear; her voice black, burning motor oil, “If you ever make an insinuation like that again, I will break every working appendage you have left, no matter how much Potency Wood you have in you.”

The ornery gardener cast his weight onto his further armrest and darted a fierce look up and down, measuring her seriousness. She let her fury burn through her eyes into his for a moment, and then stalked after the police.

In under 20 minutes the investigation was concluded. In less than 50, they were off the ship. Crimson climbed to the cockpit to boil.

*

Braevel didn’t tend to eat with the crew as such. His water-suit made it impractical. Most of the cooked food wasn’t to his liking anyway. But often he sat with them at mealtimes. It was the only time they tended to gather as a group. With the domed observatory window, and conversation, it could be quite nice. Kaldus Major filled the window with blue most of the time, but at intervals the Rival angled away, and the smaller Kaldus Minor shone hazy brown in the distance.

Of course those on the Boatman were not with them, and Crimson, too, did not show up. Those that were left gathered one by one, while Keffler scraped and banged together a meal with less civility than usual. Upon hearing yet another pot crash violently onto the counters within the kitchen, the ornamented Vizavian Tager leaned into the group and explained, “I heard they took his bubble spoor.”

“Ah!” Braevel drew circles with his gauntlet, his finger swishing inside the watery suit. Apparently their little concoction had been unnecessary. He hoped the Syrric Polodus wouldn’t suffer for having so much of its nectar drained.

Finally Keffler’s chair whirred into the Mess and he tossed a big pot into the middle of the closest table.

“There it is,” he grimaced, “Eat it or don’t.”

Shaak-Rom stood up, plate in hand, and leaned over. His red lips split in a smile, exposing his pointed teeth. “Mmmm. Spa-get-ee…” Using the hooked fork from Keffler’s culinary arsenal Shaak-Rom pulled out a clump of the stretchy noodles.

“Oh! Meatballs today!” Braevel chimed in cheerfully. “You really have outdone yourself!” He did like meatballs; they tended to sink slowly and were more fun to eat in his personal tank.

Keffler shot him a guarded glance, “It’s a special frikkin’ day. The cops stole my stuff. We nearly chucked the Boatman into a comet. What’s next? Just be glad yer eatin’.”

“Why’s that?” asked Jumondo. The Grobaxian’s massive shoulders and hairy jaw both lifted in alarm at the thought of not having food.

Keffler sniffed. “I was told to pack enough food for Andross and the bug for two days. Now they got a Megladyte on board!”

“And P’Xak,” Shaak-Rom said sitting back down to hunch over his portion. His striped tentacle dreads dangled over the food, twitching.

Keffler gave a short laugh, “Oh, great.”

“I did not realize he was still on the Boatman helping Gator when Crimson sealed the shuttle bay.”

“Is that what happened?” Braevel cocked his head, finally understanding.

“Had I known, I would have erased our logs more correctly.” Shaak-Rom shook his head. “An important detail that nearly cost us our cover story.”

“Oh I don’t know,” Braevel chirped, trying to console the duty-bound Trivven, “Crimson covered it, and apparently we’re not the first ship to have records not up to date.”

“Yeah, well,” Keffler jutted back in, “four humanoids on two person rations for two days would be bad enough. But make one of them a Megladyte, and we might only have one crewman return.”

The crew thought about this for a miment. Braevel wasn’t sure if it was another human ‘joke’ or a real possibility.

They fell into silence again; each helped themselves to piles of the pressed wheat noodles in the red sauce. Braevel began to think of the health concerns of the hungry pilots, and what preparations he should make to receive them. Keffler continued to brood. Finally he grunted, “All right boys, don’t leave any left overs.” Then he drove off.

*

Crimson couldn’t go to her room. There was no one else to fly the Rival Bay. At the moment they were safely settled into a cislunar orbit. The sun, YG98729648, or Pincha to the inhabitants of Kaldus Major, rose approximately every hour with their rapid rotation. She sat casually, her booted, human foot propped up on the console. Below her Kaldus Major looked surprisingly like Earth II—like Earth I for that matter—according to her Mindframe; blue, green, white, mountains, forests, ice caps, shallow seas… But it did nothing to make her feel connected to her humanity. Her cold, hollow pelvis, and hauntingly numb leg and arm left her nothing. She rotated her robotic left wrist and closed the metal fingers, glaring at the primitive action.

Bumping and a caustic curse came to her from down the catwalk. Keffler. She did not want to talk to him; for a moment she considered sealing the bridge, blocking him out. It would be pointless.

The whirring of his electric chair brought the rattling contraption to the back of the cockpit.

His gravelling voice rattled mercilessly, “Ya’ know for a tin can, you sure took that personally.”

She stood up so fast she nearly broke her seat from its support rod. “I warned you Keffler! I run an all male crew, not because I’m your sex toy, but a slave driver. If you or anyone else wants a piece of me, so help me I’ll—”

“You’ll what?!” spat the gardener, eye glinting fiercely in the light of the blue planet. “Break every working appendage I have left? Try it, princess! I’ll take you over my bad knees and spank your tin cheeks!”

Crimson sucked in a sharp breath and lurched over him, balling both her fists. Keffler remained slouched in his chair, about as intimidated as a coiled rattlesnake.

“I’m not done!” he puffed, “You keep walking around this place like you think the universe owes you something. Well, it doesn’t! There’s only one constant in this universe and you know what it is?”

“No! Pain. Pain is the only constant in this crazy ol,’ messed up, spinning, black merry-go-round of a universe. It happens to everybody in one shape or another. It either kills you, or you survive!”

“Oh, and you’re a survivor?” Crimson jeered, spit flying off her lips on the ‘v’s.

“You don’t know anything about me!” Keffler snarled back, “I lost everything! But I’m not gonna’ sit around Earth II, pining for Earth I. Yeah, the universe sucks! But if it’s gotta’ suck, then it might as well suck interesting. That’s why I packed my crippled butt onto a flying cupboard: to see what else is around the next corner—besides pain! The sooner you get it the sooner you can get on with your surviving business.”

Rage surged along the implants on her spine, and the blood in her veins pounded against every metallic and synth interface. It one movement she wrenched open her heavy leather belt buckle with her good hand, and yanked down her denim shorts, exposing her metal pelvis. In another swift movement she peeled off her sleeveless top. She tried to fling it away; it caught on her robotic elbow joint, and dangled like a rag. She stood before him bare chested and exposed. Whatever life and curve her breasts had once had was dry and flat. Her skin was pale. Jagged scars and red irritation showed when her skin met the crudely grafted prosthetics. Robotics took over well before any chance of finding human reproductive organs. “You call this surviving!”

Keffler sat there. He did not feign shock, or embarrassment. Instead he maintained an even chew on the inside of his cheek, scowling. Deliberately he raked his eyes down her pale chest, middle, and robotic pelvis; suddenly she regretted her choice. Keffler’s eyes snapped back to hers. His face registered no change in emotion.

She didn’t know what to do. She looked at the shirt hanging awkwardly from her metal elbow. Put it on again and Keffler would win. She felt nothing; but for some reason her tear ducts pulsed. Nothing came out. “You’re a jerk, Keffler!”

Keffler was impassive. “Yeah, you’re a jerk.”

Angrily she turned her head away, to Kaldus Major and the rising sun.

The hum of Keffler’s motor turned her back. He was maneuvering around to leave. But he stopped and said, “If yer human half gets hungry, I left spaghetti in the walk-in fridge.”

He drove away.

Crimson jacked up her shorts and re-buckled the belt. She put her shirt back on. Then she turned and plopped back in the pilot’s seat, facing the window for her third dawn that day. She didn’t know where the anger had gone; but for the moment she felt quiet.

Cloak and dagger wasn’t really Keffler’s style. He was more of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. If you wanted a bed-of-frikkin-roses kind of guy, you had to go somewhere else.

And usually, when they were bagging criminals, Keffler didn’t have much to do with the actual mission. Not his cup of tea. Humanoids weren’t much his cup of tea. Too full of crap. All this sneaking around lately, with a large heap of bull-crapping people on the side was new territory.

Then again, maybe it was fun. Likely bite them in the butt, though.

Keffler powered his way over to the maintenance elevator between the Mess and the crew quarters. It was set back a bit, and he was usually the only one to use it. For some reason Crimson and the party-antlered police chief followed. Keffler whacked the call button and the screen flung open, followed by the garage doors. He wheeled himself inside and banged a tight circle to land next to the inside control panel in a well-practiced maneuver, the back end of his chair nearly catching Crimson and the police chief in the sides. They stepped in once it was safe, and three other Picho police. The rest of the officers stared at the full maintenance lift in bewilderment, looking like a bunch of crustaceans after a seagull had picked through their heads.

“Use the flim flam stairs, you space-bottled morons!” Keffler snarled, flicking his wrist at the dumbfounded underlings. He struck the control panel and the doors closed. He grumbled, “… ‘Think they’d never seen a full elevator…”

In a moment the gray doors were lumbering open, and Keffler zipped out ahead of the others, and trundled around towards the Green House. The police and Crimson strode to keep up.

The artificial gravity weakened near the entrance to the Arboretum, and Keffler sped through it and hung left to stay on the catwalk between the ship and the sky pane. He knew his gardens well enough to see the second garden pane was just coming round from the ceiling. GP2 was where he had built his personal green house, and kept the more exciting plants he had found (and/or the ones it was best if they didn’t cross pollenate with the others). If he rode at top speed he could outpace the Arboretum’s rotation and ride up the cylinder towards the ceiling, but Crimson’s warning voice held him back and he waited for the escort to catch up. He didn’t have much over the lucky brats who still had working legs, but if anyone could demand he slow down for someone’s benefit, it was Crimson.

“Didn’t realize our fine guests couldn’t keep up,” he grumbled.

Crimson’s dark eyes silenced any further remarks, and the police chief, to his credit, didn’t respond.

After a while of marching, they at last came to GP2 and turned right to descend the slope of grass and shrubs. They passed Keffler’s heavy spruce glades, still young trees, but promising O2 generators for the future. Potted apple trees stood in three lines on their right, and then came the GP2 irrigation pond. It was Keffler’s favorite with the Fijillion Lily Pads, and the alien Whorler Reeds. Beauty and utility. Finding alien plants that were both benign, and compatible with Earth II flora was a quest all its own—finding ones that encouraged fertility in the soil, and rejuvenated their little ecosystem were gems in a galaxy of ‘takers.’

But takers were fun too. He had plenty of those in his green house. He had to keep mice just to feed the Herribus Rat Trap. Keffler chuckled to himself picturing one of these space gonzo’s poking a finger in that one. Wouldn’t be pretty…

They pushed through the plastic flaps, and the heavy moist air met them like a crowded classroom in summer. “Don’t touch anything,” was all her said to his followers.

Crimson was playing nice. She expounded, “Several of these are experimental hybrids; poisonous. Especially pointy ones.”

A smile crimped Keffler’s left eye. That ought to put the fear of pollen rods in them. He imagined the line of officers narrowing to single file and eyeing his plants suspiciously as they carefully edged past. Good.

Suddenly he exploded: “What in a thousand galaxies are you doing man! Put that down you imbecile!”

A pair of officers were already in the green house, with their scanning implement, one holding a trail of ivy in his black gloves. They straightened, their coral-esque head growths clacking into a low misting pipe, and stumbled awkwardly back.

“No! Don’t—touch! Stop!” Keffler babbled racing ahead, and seizing the closest officer by the wrist. The Pincho stopped thrashing and looked bewildered. Keffler didn’t release him for a long moment. He was drawing a deep breath and summoning his worst maldictions, when one of them spotted their commanding officer.

“Sir! We’ve isolated the reading to in here, but the humidity is making hard to find the exact source.”

Captain Ratu Tallar was starting to feel in charge again. He muscled his way up to his men and grabbed the scanner in his large, gloved hand. He turned to Keffler. “Any ideas where we should be looking?”

Keffler figured he had to make this good. He chewed the inside of his lip for a minute, “No—” he said slowly. “Well, maybe, I suppose. Depends on what you fella’s consider illegal…”

“Drugs, mostly,” said Tallar, with eyes that said he was serious.

“Huh,” Keffler grunted, as though that concept was novel. “Well, I suppose it could be a little concoction the doctor and I was working on. Some of the boys on board have a little problem, ya see…” Keffler whipped out a piece of rubber hose he’d been cutting earlier and held it up, only to let it flop. One of Tallar’s men snickered. Keffler drove past the captain and led the rest of the way to the workbench where his and Braevel’s makeshift still was dripping modified nectar into little jars. “It’s all right here. First dose seemed a little more potent then we reckoned. Not only does it enhance the men, it seems to entice the ladies.” Keffler tapped the brow of his hat and nodded discreetly towards Crimson. “Even the robot ladies.”

Tallar watched him with caution. One of his men, who looked the oddest, with a dome of brain coral on his noggin, brought the scanner close. It clicked and beeped for a few moments. Keffler waited with eyebrow raised.

The police officer looked up, “Nope. Not it.” Tallar looked about to release a monsoon, but suddenly the police officer’s careless scanner drifted past another object. It whirred and beeped frantically. The officer squawked and gripped the instrument with both gloves, waving it side to side. “It’s here!”

“Oh, snake’s spit!” Crimson groaned.

The police descended like bees on a honeycomb, hands slapping onto the purplish crate.

Crimson’s teeth were not going to unclench, but words still came out. “You have our log book. We made a delivery of bubble spoors from Berkatol to Qualvanna, just before coming here. I recently learned that crewman Keffler kept one for personal study, but did not know they were illegal substances in this system.”

Tallar blew a long breath between thoughtful lips. “Unfortunately our neighboring system embraces this vile substance. But its worst properties are not felt by the inhabitants of that ecosystem. Here, however,” he said, assuming an authoritative stance, “such goods are strictly embargoed. You’re bubble spoor will come into the custody of the Pincho Police, and not be returned to the bearers. If you dispute this acquisition you may appeal to the Higher Court system for a hearing on behalf of your case. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Come on,” Keffler crowed, ears tingling with rage. “But… what about the Syrric Polodus, and the… the Potency Wood?”

Tallar’s men were already confiscating the spoor crate. Tallar was half turned to go, but he looked back. “Syrric Polodus? Why would you have that? That stuff gives me a rash.”

“Shaak-Rom! Are you done?” Crimson yelled up the catwalk. If her electrical components would allow her she probably would have anxiety. As it was, the elevated heart rate only irritated her and made her ornery. Earth II hornets would probably steer clear.

“Done!” said the red and striped, tribal devil. He tripped over his own boots squeezing out of the tight workstation behind the cockpit. Sometimes they called it the Archive. If the cockpit ever snapped off at the neck, taking the bridge crew with it, whoever was left had a chance of being able to run most of the rest of the Rival’s business and some critical systems from emergency backups in the Archive. Just so long as they didn’t want to fly anywhere. But it wasn’t built for convenience. Fortunately Shaak-Rom was a master of several martial arts; he broke his fall with a graceful stumble and rebounded off the passage way’s opposite bulkhead with the heel of one hand. He trooped towards her. “Gator, Andross, and Clidjitt never existed on this ship. Gator had a lot more disk history to rewrite…”

“Fine. We have visitors,” Crimson growled, not waiting for him to reach her before she turned and stalked off; he’d catch up to her cybernetic stagger quickly.

“Who’s on deck?” Shaak-Rom asked, nearly there already.

“Tager. Cort.” She needed friendly, ignorant faces. No one was ignorant, so friendly would have to do. Mog Mog and Jumondo looked like bouncers. Keffler and Braevel were busy. Micron was illegal in 17 systems. Of Krevvenar, P’Xak, and the Vizavians, only Tager tended to smile. And Cort was short and fuzzy.

“I’ll call them,” Shaak-Rom said coming even with her.

“Already did.”

*

Outside the Shuttle Bay they waited for the air pressure to normalize. The police corvette sat in the hanger, glimmering with reflective polish. The long body and engines confirmed Crimson’s suspicion that running a police blockade had never been an option. The amber lights inside the bay rotated, mesmerizing.

“So. This is fun,” Cort said. The space-rat cracked his rodent knuckles.

“So many visitors,” Shaak-Rom contributed, showing his pointed teeth with an ironic smile.

Tager smoothed his black hair with both hands using the Shuttle Bay’s pressurized window as a mirror. He cocked his head right and left, checking out the glints of gold from his facial jewelry. “It’s like a parade through here. We should charge admission for this party. What’s our story this time?”

Crimson’s hard eyes never left the confusing contours of the sleek corvette. She couldn’t ascertain if the reflective curves were for additional visibility in the vacuum of space or a precursor to cloaking technology. “No story. We’re deputized GP bounty hunters, looking for bounties in the Pinchava system. We don’t know what set off their drug alarms. We’ll comply fully with them as they search our ship.”

“What if they find Rullorrg’s surveillance devices?” Cort sniffed, twitching his whiskers. His large black eyes were honest and practical. Crimson tried once again to find an Earth II parallel for the space rodent. He had a furry tail, not fleshy like a rat’s….

“Then they’ll have searched better than Vaken Rae, a drug dealer with something to lose.”

Cort pointed his nose at the corvette and sniffed as though trying to gauge the Pincho Police. “Let’s hope not.”

The lights clicked green, and klaxons signaled it was safe to open the Bay. Immediately the ramp to the corvette opened with a hiss. Cort keyed open the door and hopped down from his electric cart, leading them in.

Booted feet descended the corvette’s ramp. The Police uniforms looked like white, trimmed-down EVA suits, crisscrossed with black hoses. The figures themselves had ruddy faces, and their heads were crowned with strange formations where hair might be on other humanoids. It looked like coral.

Most cultures put the leader at the front. But the collection of different coral-shaped heads parted and the commanding officer strode up from the back. A large asymmetrical rack of porous Elkhorn coral circled his skull.

“I’m Captain Ratu Tallar of the Pinchava System Police. Are you the commander of this vessel?” His eyes pointed to Tager, who stood last in line.

Captain Tallar shifted his attention to the cyborg female. “We detected trace evidence of something that could be illegal substances. Are you in possession of any intergalactic drugs or weapons, as banned by the Galactic or Pincho Precinct?”

“We’re deputized by the Galactic Precinct,” Crimson continued, her voice as flat as a monk fish. “Why would we have any contraband on board?”

Tallar shifted his weight, resting both hands on his utility belt. He was packing heat. “That is for me to determine.”

“Of course,” Crimson grunted, “You’re free to search the vessel. All our optipad-work is in order.” She waved a pad with her human hand.

Tallar gestured to his men. One came forward and took the optipad from Crimson, while the others began to pull scanning equipment off the corvette. Tallar gave the pad a cursory glance and stepped up to Crimson and her people. “Is this your entire crew?”

The smile on Crimson’s face was fake; it disappeared as soon as she spoke. “No. They’re at work.”

“I’ll need them assembled.” Tallar sighed and looked around routinely. He was comfortable with control.

“I’ll have everyone gather at the Circle. Would you like to follow me?”

For a moment the Rival Bay rolled starboard on its sagittal axis. Any beached space-whales in the solar system might have been envious of the awkward, asymmetrical generation seed ship banking and rolling, hurtling by on the sub-lightspeed magnetic superhighway.

If Andross had planned it right, they had a 14 second gap between any oncoming traffic, and the nearest comet doing its biannual loop through the Pinchava System. The weight of the Boatman was different now that Gator was onboard. Crimson hoped Andross, and especially Clidjitt, had factored that into their calculations for escape speed.

“You’ll be in my magnetic wake for a few seconds Boatman.” Crimson reminded them, via Linkburst feed. “Just try not to burn me when you break free.”

“Roger,” Clidjitt’s speech box chirped. “Initiating thrusters.”

Crimson could hear Andross’ voice bossing backseat commands at the insectoid. She didn’t have visual relays to the body of the Rival but her sensor display could now pick up a second body flying within their vicinity. Collision alerts suddenly flared red on her screen. She ignored them.

A squeal and a crackle exploded through the ‘burst feed. It took Crimson’s Mindframe a millisecond to sort through the overloaded speaker output and decipher the cheers: “Yeeehaa!”

“Boatman away!” Clidjitt reported.

“Good work,” Crimson grunted. In Mag-flight you could never see oncoming traffic, but Crimson’s Mindframe imagined the sensor blip of an oncoming ship as it streaked past them. She swiped the back of her human hand across her eyebrows, dashing away the sweat. She could still feel adrenaline. That was something.

From the background of the ‘burst feed she heard Andross again, “Whoa! Comet!”

“We have cleared the comet!” Clidjitt clarified.

Good. “See you in two days, Boatman. I’ll lose you in a moment.”

“Roger that, Rival we’ll see you when—”

They were gone from ‘burst reception.

Crimson extended both mechanical and organic elbows to their full extension, hands on the controls, leaning back in her chair. Then she relaxed her spine, letting her left shoulder weigh her down for a moment. She straightened. In four hours they would have police visitors. Had to be sure they were ready.

When she got back to the bridge Crimson’s rattling Mindframe dropped all its calculations, and spit out one equation: “Aw, crap.”

Andross was still sitting in the cockpit, rummaging around the nav-displays with Clidjitt; Andross—full of Flyer Crystal residue.

“Hey, Mama Robot,” Andross twisted his chair around with the grace of an arthritic frog, “I was just explaining to the insect that the M in is not that of the Rival but the imaginary mass of the Mag-lock. We are recalculating to compensate for the difference not from us to a planetary body, but the imagined force of a body that can draw an object through a solar system at the speed of light. It’s kind of like the kid brother of a black hole…!”

“Yeah,” grunted Crimson, “I need all the Flyer Crystal evidence off my ship. That includes you. You’re still not flying the mission.”

“Oh, come ooon! I could do this with my eyes closed.” He gestured his exasperation, but Crimson could detect the clumsy, slowness to his movement.

“I could have you shoved in a hermetically sealed container pod with sensor dampers until the cops are gone. Don’t make me delta-v my mind.”

Andross wiggled like a bobble-head. “That’s not technically correct. You would have had to say: don’t make my mind reach delta-v…”

“Andross.”

Ballistic and orbital mechanics rolled the MiPie’s eyes in a slingshot effect. “Okaaay.”

*

If she ever got to see Vaken Rae again, she would personally crush all his knuckles in her robotic hand. Shaak-Rom was in a back workstation, frantically falsifying the crew list, hiding Andross and Clidjitt’s payroll records. The crystals were loaded onto the Boatman, but it all hinged on Gator getting the Doon-tau jammer up and running. Currently he was having problems; P’Xak was helping him. Besides that, Keffler and Braevel reported having difficulty with their little science experiment. Time was running out.

Crimson sat in the cockpit alone, her Mindframe clicking over loudly, counting the milliseconds as their window for the launching the Boatman approached. She straddled the flight desk, poised for action, staring into the tie-dye funnel of spectral color changes.

Her right middle finger was on the intercom. Only the first knuckle flexed to press the call button. “Gator: status.”

“I’m working, Crims,”came the rumbling reply, impatient and deep in his scaly throat.

“Five minutes to decompression,” she growled, equally flat.

“Tell Andross he may have to ride an air explosion…!”

Depressurizing a full shuttle bay of air was illegal in some systems, due to the short supply of purified oxygen. Not only that, it was dangerous; sudden depressurization could break a million little things as the weight of 100,000 pounds of air burst into the vacuum of space. It was impractical, wasteful, and irresponsible. Then igniting a shuttle’s fuel thrusters right into the cloud of O2? Chernobyl.

But worse still…

“Andross isn’t flying,” Crimson shook her head, hissing her ‘s’s more than she realized. The flamboyant pilot was good, but the fact that he was on board a vessel didn’t automatically make him the pilot. Andross had wooed everyone to believe it was so, including himself.

But the Megladyte lacked interest, “Okay…”

“Are you done in time?” she demanded.

“I completely dismantled it, Crims! We didn’t want it hangin’ around. And there ain’t no instructions to rebuild it!”

“What do you need?”

“At least another hour!”

The math was simple. “You have half that. You’re on the Boatman for this one. Depressurization in 3 minutes. See you in a couple of days.”

“Peaches.”

*

Being a chunk of flesh sitting on a mechanical frame had its advantages at times. When the Shuttle Bay was empty the countdown was complete. Gator radioed his success only 96 seconds earlier. She left it to them, and allowed her Mindframe’s components to guide her hands, bringing the Rival Bay to the exact angle necessary for ejection. The bay doors opened. Clidjitt was good. She hoped he was up for the challenge. She struck the intercom.